Retired Rear Adm. Earl L. Gay, President Barack Obama’s nominee for deputy OPM director, will no longer be considered for the position, according to a White House press release. Since 2013, Gay served as the senior adviser to former director Katherine Archuleta.

The General Services Administration signed its third MOU with a large federal organization to use the professional services governmentwide acquisition contract known as OASIS. In return for its pledge to spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year, DHS receives a lower fee.

The executive branch has gotten the DATA Act off to a good start by meeting its first deadline, Obama administration officials, auditors and lawmakers agree. But persistent problems with the data itself threaten to undermine the financial transparency at the heart of the law.

How are government agencies buying cloud computing capability with an eye toward data governance? The cloud touts limitless possibilities, but CIOs are putting in place techniques to maintain control of their data and avoid vendor lock-in. As a result, data stewardship has become increasingly complex with the need to manage and access data across the cloud.

Today, even in the Fed space, it is all about the apps – being able to access the information or content you need, when you need it. But just providing the app is a job half done. What really matters is the app experience.

Agency of the Month examines the many important facets of government agencies. Each month, Federal News Radio speaks with top executives from a specific agency about the issues most important to its mission. The Agency of the Month for July 2015 - the U.S. Department of Education.

Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford will be the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He’ll begin his term October first when the current chairman — Army Gen. Martin Dempsey — retires. Retired Air Force Gen. Richard Myers was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2001 to 2005. He tells In Depth with Francis Rose about the challenges he walked into on his first day as chairman and how they might compare to what Dunford has on his plate.

The Defense Department’s nuclear forces arsenal is getting a close look for affordability. Think tanks like the Government Accountability Office and even the Pentagon itself are all looking at how much money the agency should spend on nuclear stock. Todd Harrison is senior fellow for defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He tells In Depth with Francis Rose why he thinks it’s important to look at nuclear forces in the context of the whole weapons inventory.

The departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs are about to undergo a quantum leap in their ability to exchange patient medical records between doctors in the two health systems – and it’s got nothing to do with the $9 billion electronic health record DoD announced it was buying this week. More from Federal News Radio’s DoD reporter Jared Serbu.

Some 10,000 diseases are known to medicine, but only 500 have established treatments. Today, it takes around $2 billion and up to a decade to bring a single new drug to market. From 2007 to 2012, private-sector investment in medical innovation in the United States fell by $13 billion. Meanwhile, investments increased around the world. One source of the problem might be the Food and Drug Administration. Janet Marchibroda is director of the Health Innovation Initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center. She joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive with some recommendations on how to improve the way the FDA carries out its mission.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology produces prodigious amounts of data. Now it wants your help to make that data more accessible. NIST has launched a contest to create and design an app using some of its data sets. Heather Evans is a challenge manager at NIST. She joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with more on the contest.

The largest federal law enforcement agency needs more agents to investigate its own. The Integrity Advisory Panel at Customs and Border Protection is calling for nearly 350 new internal affairs investigators to root out what it calls “systemic corruption.” The group’s report also urges officials to revise some policies and recommends specific restrictions on the use of firearms. Gil Kerlikowske is the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. He joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive with his reaction to what the advisory panel is recommending.

More News

The President-elect’s transition team has only 77 days to get up to speed before the future President takes office. Several initiatives in Washington are already looking at how to make that transition easier. Martha Kumar takes a look at management during presidential transitions and the early days of a new administration in her new book: ”Before the Oath — How George W. Bush and Barack Obama Managed a Transfer of Power”. She tells In Depth with Francis Rose about some of the most pressing issues that transition teams face.

In today’s news, the FBI is having trouble filling key cybersecurity roles, the Senate has voted to fill a $3.3 billion gap in the Veterans Affairs Department’s budget and the White House launches a national supercomputing initiative.

Federal News Radio Executive Editor Jason Miller is reporting this week from the National Contract Management Association’s World Congress in Dallas. He reports on CDC contracting, GSA’s FedSIM program and the current status of DoD’s new services acquisition policy.

The problem with most data breaches is that too often, IT and security staffs only find out about them long after the damage has been done and the hackers have moved on to other soft targets, says Federal Drive host Tom Temin.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is under scrutiny over whether she sent or received classified information on unsecured email when she was secretary of state. Here’s a look at how government information is made secret — or not.

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has reminded the military service chiefs that Defense Department policy does allow some military personnel to be armed while working at recruiting centers and ROTC offices.

Katrina McFarland, the assistant secretary of Defense for acquisition, said a new report is in the final approval stages that will detail changes to the Defense FAR. The goal is to save the military and industry money from unnecessary procurement rules.